Justice vs preferences
2009-04-19 · Original WordPress address
Those whose bumper stickers read "If you want peace, work for justice" simply take it for granted that there is no question what is just; if you want to find out, just ask them. The problem with the world as they see it is merely that other people are insufficiently virtuous to act accordingly.
--- David Friedman being his brilliant self (but in the comments he uses that damned "webbed" adjective again!)
Here's his "amoral and alegal" positive account of rights. The most important sentence: "To a mind of sufficient scope every number is unique." ((His footnote: "The proof is by induction. If some positive integers are uninteresting, then there must be a smallest positive uninteresting integer. But this unique characteristic makes that number interesting. So there can be no smallest uninteresting positive integer, so there can be no uninteresting positive integers. Similarly, mutatis mutandis, for negative integers." Awesome.)) and the conclusion: "The social order, to the extent that it is evolved rather than legislated, is a set of rules that exist because it was in the interest of pairs of individuals to abide by them, not because they promote the general good of society.".